Last summer in Languedoc I saw in a church my first picture of St Roch.
For some reason this saint has never made it to Ireland and I was fascinated to discover what this man was doing lifting his skirt to show off a mark on his thigh.

I later discovered that there was a legend of St. Roch being fed by a dog when he had the plague.
The skirt raising gesture was to show the buboes, which are symptomatic of the plague, and which are generally at the groin.

Last spring I was delighted to read in Alan Bennet’s Untold Stories;
“St Rocca…is more difficult to take however well he’s painted because he must always be hitching up his skirt to show you his boil…..In the painting by Crivelli which is in the Wallace Collection you half expect him to be wearing suspenders”

All this has put me on permanent look-out for pictures of the saint and this summer I was well rewarded.

There follows a sampling of my research.

This one we found in Jaca in the Spanish Pyrenees.
A standard and quite modest version

This lad was hiding behind the altar in the little
village of Azille near Carcassonne.
Hiding with him were the ass and the ox from the Christmas crib

This far more flamboyant version was in the wealthy
monastery in Lagrasse

This was from the village of Trebes and had the slightly
sinister addition of a cherub to display the boil.

As had this one from Montaulieu, but here he had the discretion
to be looking away.

This church also had a second one in stained glass

This human and natural version is my favourote.
He was in the old chapel of Saissac in the Aude

These two were in the church in Dinan.
The second one of his death is the only time I
saw him depicted without the skirt lifting.

This dark and sinister image was in the church
in Carcassonne.

And this is the image from the Wallace
collection which Alan Bennet mentions.
I certainly did not find anything to rival the
exhibitionism shown here!

PS

Our friend Finola found this black garbed St Roch in Montenegro.
Could he be wearing specs?(and sock suspenders!)